There's a new player in the already crowded prepaid wallet space. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has granted a prepaid payments instrument to Hyderabad-based Kedia Infotech Limited which runs a recharge and bill payment service called eSevaworld. The RBI website shows that the company got its wallet licence in July and is valid up to September 2020. Kedia Infotech which also has a hardware and software business, began the recharge service in 2007 and claims that it has 700 touch points in the country with around 1.2 million customers mostly around Assam, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. Speaking to MediaNama at the sidelines of an event, Abhishek Kedia, chief operating officer at the company explained that they are currently acquiring merchants for the platform. Kedia further explained that the company wants to enable payments via mobile numbers. "When you go into a merchant's shop you have to do a transaction from a smartphone and share some details with him and that's when it gets executed. We're talking about where users can walk into a store and share his mobile number and a pull transaction can be initiated. We can authenticate payments via an OTP which the customer gets and will have to share with the merchant." The company has also tied up with Kotak Mahindra Bank which acts as an escrow for the money stored in the wallet and will be partnering with other banks. Kedia also added that they are targeting customers of regional and urban co-operative banks and…
